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Let us, then, go back to the source, and indicate at once the
Principle that bestows beauty on material things.
Undoubtedly this Principle exists; it is something that is
perceived at the first glance, something which the soul names as
from an ancient knowledge and, recognising, welcomes it, enters
into unison with it.
But let the soul fall in with the Ugly and at once it shrinks
within itself, denies the thing, turns away from it, not
accordant, resenting it.
Our interpretation is that the soul- by the very truth of its
nature, by its affiliation to the noblest Existents in the
hierarchy of Being- when it sees anything of that kin, or any
trace of that kinship, thrills with an immediate delight, takes
its own to itself, and thus stirs anew to the sense of its nature
and of all its affinity.
But, is there any such likeness between the loveliness of this
world and the splendours in the Supreme? Such a likeness in the
particulars would make the two orders alike: but what is there in
common between beauty here and beauty There?
We hold that all the loveliness of this world comes by communion
in Ideal-Form.
All shapelessness whose kind admits of pattern and form, as long
as it remains outside of Reason and Idea, is ugly by that very
isolation from the Divine-Thought. And this is the Absolute Ugly:
an ugly thing is something that has not been entirely mastered by
pattern, that is by Reason, the Matter not yielding at all points
and in all respects to Ideal-Form.
But where the Ideal-Form has entered, it has grouped and
coordinated what from a diversity of parts was to become a unity:
it has rallied confusion into co-operation: it has made the sum
one harmonious coherence: for the Idea is a unity and what it
moulds must come to unity as far as multiplicity may.
And on what has thus been compacted to unity, Beauty enthrones
itself, giving itself to the parts as to the sum: when it lights
on some natural unity, a thing of like parts, then it gives
itself to that whole. Thus, for an illustration, there is the
beauty, conferred by craftsmanship, of all a house with all its
parts, and the beauty which some natural quality may give to a
single stone.
This, then, is how the material thing becomes beautiful- by
communicating in the thought that flows from the Divine.
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